About the Blog

I will post a new entry every few weeks. Some will be new writing and some will be past work that has relevance today. The writing will deal in some way with the themes that have been part of my teaching and writing life for decades:

•teaching and learning;•educational opportunity;•the importance of public education in a democracy;•definitions of intelligence and the many manifestations of intelligence in school, work, and everyday life; and•the creation of a robust and humane philosophy of education.

If I had to sum up the philosophical thread that runs through my work, it would be this: A deep belief in the ability of the common person, a commitment to educational, occupational, and cultural opportunity to develop that ability, and an affirmation of public institutions and the public sphere as vehicles for nurturing and expressing that ability.

My hope is that this blog will foster an online community that brings people together to continue the discussion.

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Tuesday, July 1, 2014

A
shorter version
of this post appeared in the June 2, 2014 edition of Boston Review
online as “The Broken Higher Ed Compact.”

***

It
is early in the morning on a hazy Southern California day, and students are
walking or riding old bicycles into the community college campus, headed for
7:00 a.m. classes in English or math, nursing or automotive technology. The
college is packed into twenty-five acres on the economically depressed
periphery of the city’s thriving financial core, and it draws on one of the
poorest populations in the area. Men sleep under newspapers and blankets in
doorways right outside the campus. One block away a line is already forming
along the wall of a social service agency. The short, bare walkway into the
campus is for many a luminous road into another world.

This
campus could serve as ground zero for Suzanne Mettler’s important new book Degrees
of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream.

A political scientist, Mettler
analyzes the policies and politics that over the past thirty years have
diminished postsecondary educational opportunity, particularly for students in
the lower half of the income distribution. If they are not deterred from
attending college, students face soaring tuition, inadequate financial aid, and
increased loans and debt. To make matters worse, most states have been slashing
higher education budgets, resulting in fewer classes and services. That trend
is beginning to reverse this year, though spending is below what it was a
decade ago, and is still inadequate to the demand. At the community college I
just described, few students can get by on their financial aid allocation,
which often comes well into the term, making it difficult to buy books and
supplies. In addition, these students’ progress is often stalled because they can’t
get the classes they need, delaying their time to an occupational certificate
or degree. Their tutoring centers and other services have been trimmed back;
their counselors have student loads that are way over 1000.

One
of Mettler’s contributions is to analyze what she calls the “policyscape” of
the last several decades, demonstrating the ways that our extreme political
partisanship and increasing influence of big money have contributed to this
mess. In essence, Mettler explains, policies are not inert; they need
maintenance. There can be flaws in a policy’s originating legislation, for
example, inadequate mechanisms to deal with cost increases. Policies can also
have unintended consequences, for example, financial aid can be inordinately
consumed by for-profit colleges. And other, unrelated policies can negatively
affect education policy, for example, the huge drain on state resources by health
care and the prison system draws money away from schools. When partisanship is
as intense as it is in our time, legislators rarely come together across party
lines to address these issues and maintain healthy policy. One exception is
when special interests with considerable money—for example, for-profit
colleges—intercede to engineer or block movement on a particular policy, often
to the detriment of overall education policy and those most in need.

The
elements of inequality that Mettler addresses—inadequate aid, diminished
student services—interact with the broader dynamics of social and economic
inequality in our time: income disparities, unstable housing, food insecurity,
cutbacks in social services. There’s an awful synergy here as each sphere of inequality
intensifies the other, making it increasingly difficult for low-income students
to enter and succeed in college.

I
spent two years in the above-mentioned college interviewing students, observing
classes, talking with teachers and administrators, and the overall picture I
got was one of profound possibility and profound need. As would be expected in
an open-access college, students exhibit a wide range of motivation and skills.
Those who are drifting through with low skills and ill-defined goals don’t last
long. But what is striking is that even those students who are doing well face
a series of obstacles that limit the benefit of the college experience and
delay their time to completion. I want to focus on them, for their stories
illustrate just how hard it is for low-income students to succeed.

Money
is a constant worry. All the successful students I met receive financial aid,
yet all but one have to work, in some cases work a lot, to make basic expenses.
Those who live with parents or relatives contribute to the household, and those
who live on their own or with others are frequently right on the edge, barely
making it month to month. One of the students I followed ended up living out of
his car for half of the school year. Transportation is also a big concern.
Either students don’t own a car or have one that’s old and unreliable—and often
they are short on money for gas. Many students don’t have a computer or, if
they do, lack reliable Internet access. I know from trying to reach them how
often their phone or Internet service is cut off.

Along
with worries about money, obligations also press on these students. The idyllic
portrayal of college as a respite from the demands of the world, a time of
exploration and growth, is as distant as a medieval fable. They have jobs, or childcare,
or family responsibilities—younger siblings to be picked up from school or
ailing parents to assist. These constraints reduce the opportunity to be
involved in extracurricular activities that could broaden their education and
help them establish potentially helpful connections with faculty, staff, and other
students. The bigger problem is that these constraints make it harder to see
faculty outside of class or to regularly work with tutors and other student
services personnel. And they need the help. The majority of the students on
this campus repeat a well-documented pattern: Those who attend two-year
colleges that serve a poor population tend to come from under-resourced,
struggling schools. Almost all the students I worked with had to take remedial
math and English, and some were still stuck in the math sequence, their
progress toward a degree stalled. They put in the time, agonize over their
textbooks at home, and try to get help from friends. But they need the kind of
ongoing, systematic assistance that a faculty member or tutor can provide.

There
are times when the demands get so intense that they have to reduce their course
load or temporarily leave school to work one or more jobs to relieve debt.
These students have no health care to speak of, so a medical emergency can be
devastating. Their families have few resources, so a mother losing her job, a
father injured, a sibling getting in trouble places big burdens on them. One
young woman who was close to completing her Associate of Arts degree and
transferring to a four-year college had to leave school for a year to pay a
$10,000 hospital bill and help her mother keep their household afloat. Parents,
particularly single parents, are sometimes faced with the terrible choice of
continuing their own education or compromising the care of their children. “I
want to succeed in life,” one woman writes, “but I will sacrifice anything for
my child.”

The
leadership and many of the faculty are aware of the weight carried by their
students and are committed to helping them. As one occupational instructor put
it, “the fact that some of our students get here daily is a success.” But, as I
noted earlier, the college is being slammed by the political and economic
forces Mettler analyzes. The state’s allocations to its community colleges have
been shrinking over the years (down more than 20% over the past two decades)
while community college enrollment has been increasing—and shot further upward
during the recession. The college has had to cut courses and greatly reduce
summer offerings, a time when many students pick up general education courses needed
for an Associate degree and for transfer. Tutoring and other services have been
significantly reduced; the writing center staff has been cut in half over the
past five years. Students wait in line two hours to see a financial aid counselor—and
sometimes have to leave without a meeting because of work or childcare. This
situation would be bad enough for anyone, but imagine the added burden placed
on people with the obligations and limited resources of this population. I don’t
know a single student who completes a certificate or degree in two years. Most take
much longer, increasing debt and forestalling occupational mobility.

***

The
subtitle of Mettler’s book states that inequitable education policies sabotage
the American Dream. One of the surprising things I found as I got to know the
students at the college was the degree to which they are driven by some version
of the American Dream. Many are cynical about politics and politicians. And
some hold strong views about race or the power dynamics of American society in
general and the workplace in particular. Yet, to a person, they believe in the
value of working hard in school and that their hard work will pay off. These
students have lots of reasons to be skeptical about what education can do for
them, for many had an awful history in the classroom. They might complain about
a certain teacher or about the problems with getting a class or with the
financial aid office, but, overall, they believe in school as a way out and up.

I’ve
seen this same optimistic commitment in so many similar students. Let me take
you to another part of the city and a very different kind of institution, a
prestigious research university where you will find far fewer of the kinds of
students enrolled at the community college. But there are some.

Roberto
came to the United States at 15 from a small rural town in Guatemala knowing
only a few words of English. Through extraordinary effort he learned his second
language, excelled in his working-class high school, and was admitted with full
financial aid to the university. In line with Mettler’s analysis, however, his
aid package included, along with grants, work-study allocations and loans. He
was able to live on campus for his first two years, but the last two had to
move back home, all the way across town to a two-bedroom apartment that, during
this time, held between seven and eleven people. He worked in a restaurant
during the morning, took classes in the afternoon, and stayed in the library
until 10:30 at night. He graduated one year ago in political science with a 3.3
GPA and $27,000 debt, which is close to the national average.

Roberto’s
goal is to work in education or some type of social service, helping people who
are in need. (Somehow, while at the university, he found the time to run a
student program that provided tutoring to students in a low-income, predominantly
Latino community.) He can’t afford to enroll in a teaching or social welfare
graduate program right now, and has not been able to find full-time employment
other than the restaurant work he’s done for years. The double shifts on the
restaurant floor are getting to him, and he feels the bite of disappointment
when a job prospect falls through. But a deep hope sustains him. He shares with
the students at the community college a resilient optimism that his education
will yield a better life.

***

We
have a longstanding belief in America that once access to opportunity is
provided, the fuel of mobility is hard work and determination. This belief is
central to the nineteenth century Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories, and it
runs through the current interest in helping underprivileged students develop
“grit,” the ability to persist in the face of difficulty. Roberto and those at
the community college possess grit by the truckload, and they have made an
educational compact with themselves and with society. What will we do to honor
that compact?

It’s
worth remembering here that even in the Alger novels, the hero’s mobility isn’t
triggered solely by his own effort, but by a wealthy benefactor who assists and
guides him. In our country’s preeminent myth of self-determination and success,
opportunity for the poor is made possible through intervention. During the
mid-twentieth century, we created a cluster of policies that facilitated
educational opportunity. Those policies have been compromised. Our already
limited social safety net has been compromised as well, further diminishing the
educational experience of low-income students. The students we’ve met persist
in spite of it all. They are admirable. But is it fair or moral in the United
States of America that young people should have to expend superhuman effort to
complete a standard, even basic, education that will in the end benefit both
them and society?

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2 comments:

SmokeyWilson
said...

As usual you touch the things that make me both angry and tearful. I figure that over 40 years (darn near) I taught some 25000 students reading n writing. Hardly any of them had it easy. They had to contend with all the crimes of policy you recount, i n addition to the crimes of gang violence, drugs,nonexistent health care, and yet through it all they hung with it. I'll never forget the legend on the back of one girl's jacket-- from GED toPHD. She got her master's and counsels vets-- or did the last I heard.She started commuity college with a toddler. When she finished her child was in high school. Should it be that hard to realize a modest American dream? It's hard not to despair.